ABSTRACT
For over two centuries, Europe’s geopolitical and ideological rivalry with looming, backward Russia has played a pivotal role in the continent’s politics. Now Russia is poised between a tarnished hope in liberal reform and the growing fear that habitual patterns are reemerging, both in domestic and foreign affairs. In the party-list voting for parliamentary representatives in December 1993, liberal reformers, illiberal nationalists, and neocommunists won roughly equal shares. Pressed by these protest votes, President Boris Yeltsin’s relatively liberal government has had to move slowly on market reform and reassert Russia’s interests in the “near abroad.” Ominously, Yeltsin and Vladimir Zhirinovsky, leader of the ultranationalist party, agree that Russia needs a constitution reserving decisive powers to a strong president.
